Page:Old Castles.djvu/65

Rh land, densely wooded, rocky, precipitous, sloping down to the Eden, on whose banks they lie, in some places by abrupt perpendicular declivities, in others by circuitous paths, under a canopy of interlacing branches, impervious to the most penetrating rains, and also to all the sunshine of the year, however piercing, however radiant. Many noble trees of all kinds are here, and one old trunk deserves especial notice, on account of its immense size and poetic appearance, being hollow at the bottom and “wreathed and crowned” with ivy at the top and round its sides. How many thoughts that old tree suggested of our ancient England, and the wild wildering years fraught with the exhalations and voices, the breath and bruit of persons and things now become almost, or quite questionable, from their very remoteness, or perhaps lost entirely from the great roll of the world's accredited and accepted facts. What was our England when this tree was a seedling or a sapling? Over what cradles were Englishwomen singing their strangely-lettered lullabies? or what was the staple masculine discussion at the castle dinner, or in the scriptorium amongst the shaven monks, who were making the margins of their manuscripts bright with the floral emblems of the names of their sainted loves? Something of this might perhaps be acquired by learning the exact age of the tree—but, oh! how little and uncertain. That world with all its woes and wonders has passed away, leaving us but the dead ashes of what was once its living substance—a